The Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds servers have been down for about three hours this morning as PUBG Corp did the maintenance necessary to roll out the PUBG’s March 2018 patch. The seventh update since PUBG left Early Access, it introduces the emote system for the first time ever, along with Steam achievements and a whole swathe of fixes and improvements.

In the emote system’s first incarnation there’ll be a grand total of 12 to choose from with the promise of an expanded range further down the line. If I were a betting man I’d hazard a guess future emotes will be found in loot crates.

On top of this, PUBG Corp has added an in-game friends list, for whatever reason. This works totally independently of Steam and allows for voice chat. You can have up to 50 players in your friends list at any one time. Who knows, perhaps this is even PUBG Corp’s first step at moving away from Steam but we’ll have to wait and see.

Here’s the full list of changes for PUBG’s PC 1.0 Update #7:

Client optimization

Improved real-time response by reducing input lag

Mitigated the frame drop issue caused by the map loading process

Reduced burden on GPU by optimizing buildings in Erangel

Optimized the beginning and the end of effects

Optimized vehicle physics when driving under a certain speed

Server optimization

Optimized server network performance

Optimized vehicle physics when driving under a certain speed

Lobby

Added PUBG friends list

Up to 50 people can be added as PUBG friends

Players with PUBG accounts can search and add friends freely regardless of the platform they are using (including Steam, Mail.ru and DMM)

Friend list is a one-way follower concept, not a mutual acceptance between players

PUBG friends list is independent of the Steam friends list. You don't have to be friends on Steam to be friends in PUBG

Up to 30 players you were recently in a team with will be shown on RECENT

Added main menu voice chat

You can chat with the players in your team while still in the main menu

When using the voice chat, a speaker icon will be displayed on the right of the player's name

*Removed the function of being able to invite a player from their career screen due to a technical issue

World

Made holes in the ceiling and floor of some high buildings, so that it is easier to move between different levels, to improve the gameplay experience on Miramar

Gameplay

Added 37 achievements on Steam

Added emote system

12 default emotes will be provided now, and more emotes will be added in the future

While holding the emote menu key (default is ~), emote can be activated by left-clicking the emote or hot key of emote you want to use

Fixed the blue blood effect being more visible than the red blood effect when player gets shot

Added material for crops, rubber, cloth, paper and cactus

When shooting or attacking with a melee weapon, the right effect for each material will be displayed

Fixed an issue where a player would have a slower falling speed when switching seats on a three-wheeled motorcycle mid-air

Fixed an issue where underwater bullet penetration effect was not being applied sometimes

Fixed an issue where a player was unable to cancel fueling up a vehicle, even though cancel was clicked

Fixed an issue where throwables that had already exploded mid-air would still make a popping sounds on the ground

Fixed an issue where sometimes a downed player was able to drive a vehicle

Fixed an issue where after reconnecting a vehicle was intermittently invisible or the character and camera were misaligned

Fixed an issue where the character of a player with a new account would not show up in the main menu when forming a team

Fixed an issue where the shadow of a character was too sharp regardless of the distance

Fixed an issue where when jumping out of the airplane, the character fell to a fixed position, no matter the flying direction

Fixed an issue where when player tried to ADS with scope attached weapon, some of the scope exterior parts were shown late

Fixed an issue where the adjusted zoom level in 8x scope reset after swapping to your other weapon(s)

Fixed an issue where the item quantity adjustment popup window displays automatically when picking up/discarding items from the Inventory screen

Fixed an issue where sometimes the lung capacity gauge was not in sync between being in the water and out of water

*Mitigated an issue where when exiting the parachute mode, player could take excessive fall damage

*Fixed an issue where the relaxed state gun animation was not shown properly

PUBG Corp is really struggling to keep pace with the breakneck speed at which Epic is pushing out Fortnite updates. While there’s a huge list of changes here, PUBG’s patches often lack the content which can provide a reason to make players want to jump in, whether that’s new vehicles, weapons or even game types. Still, it doesn’t exactly seem to be doing the game any harm, at least now. PUBG is still the most popular game on Steam by a long, long margin, racking up 2.5 million concurrent players regularly.

Pleased by changes PUBG Corp is making? Have you got any longstanding issues that still aren’t fixed? Let us know what they are below!